Red
by viirus
Summary: Face to face with the wolf, Freak stared with large unfocused eyes and said, "I don't think I'll taste very good." And to the freak, the wolf replied, "then I s'pose I ought to keep you around until you do. • A dark Harry Potter version of Little Red Riding Hood, but not really - [ Dark!Harry / Gen ]


**General Warnings** : [ Dark fic ] [ Dark Harry ] [ Child abuse ] [ Gen ( no pairings, probably ) ] [ Diverges from canon ( a lot ) ] [ Might as well call it an A.U. ]

 **Note** : Basically Harry's a traumatized brat who would rather ignore his problems than face them and Fenrir isn't going to be much help because, well, he's Fenrir.

 **Disclaimer** : Harry Potter | J.K. Rowlings

* * *

 **RED — [** FORWARD / PROLOGUE **]**

 **((** What a Painful Heart You Have **))**

* * *

 _A young girl would go into the wood as trustingly as Red Riding Hood to her granny's house,_

 _but this light admits no ambiguities and, here, she will be trapped in her own illusion,_

 _because everything in the woods is exactly as it seems. - Angela Carter_

* * *

Freak was not a good little boy, he knew this because his uncle told him so and his uncle knew everything there was to know about anything. ' _Bad boys like you_ ,' his uncle would tell him, ' _deserved to be devoured by wolves and cursed by witches. No doubt if there were such thing as magic, you'd have been cursed by now seeing as all you bring to this family is misfortune_.' Of course, however, there was no such thing as magic because his uncle said so. Freak had long since thrown away the vague memories of flashing green lights and flying giants in tiny motorbikes because clearly those were delusions his freakish mind had conjured in order to defy his uncle.

"I don't do this because I like it," Uncle Vernon would tell him, and Freak would stare blankly at the man's crooked (false, condescending, _lying_ ) smile and repeatedly remind himself that he was only being punished because he was still having nightmares of flashing green lights that weren't supposed to be real. If he was a good boy he'd be fed properly, if he was a good boy he'd be clothed properly, and if he wasn't a good boy he was, by default, a bad one. He'd learnt long ago, that he'd never be anything more than that.

Freak had never been outside of his basement. His entire life was the four dreary walls and single twin sized mattress placed in the middle of the floor. Occasionally, his Aunt Petunia would open the door to leave him a plate of food, it was during these times, Freak was witness to light, but only ever glimpses and never for very long. Each time the door opened, Freak would soak up as much of the light as he could before he was forced to cover his eyes because the light was always too bright for him to handle. Freak didn't know much about the real world as he was never educated, so he could only ever assume that the fact his eyes couldn't stand the light was because the light was too pure for someone so dirty like him. His uncle only ever encouraged this belief.

"If you stare into the light for too long, you'll loose your sight completely. Why? Because you're tainted and tainted creatures like you don't deserve the light we pure creatures bask in."

Sometimes when his uncle wasn't home, Petunia would whisper things to him through the other side of the basement door. Sometimes she would even call her Harry, and he'd call himself Harry too, but never in front of his uncle and never out loud where he could be heard.

Freak's life was not a happy one, but he didn't really know any better because he'd never known anything else.

Freak would forever live in the murky darkness of the Dursley's basement because that was his life and that was what he deserved.

"What the hell is wrong with him?"

That is, until one night that changed because one night he got sick, and while he'd been sick once before, he'd never been as sick as he'd been that night.

"Vernon, he's going to die if we don't do something!"

"Well we can't bloody well take him to the hospital, they'll ask questions!"

"Vernon, he's going to die! What if _they_ find out! Don't you know what they can do to us?"

"Dammit Pet, don't you think I know that already? Just, just- I'll get rid of him and take him away, far away where no one will ever find him."

"And what will you say when they come asking about him?!"

"We'll tell them he ran away! That he wasn't grateful for the things we gave him and he left! That we tried to stop him, but we couldn't find him-"

"That's not going to work! They'll use their freaky powers and find the truth! Why don't we just take him to the-"

A sharp slap cut off Petunia's shrieks.

"I can't believe you-"

"Darling, I am sorry. I am sorry, this is all his fault. I am sorry, I love you, I didn't mean to do that, you know me. I am sorry, it won't happen again, it's just I am stressed out because of that blasted freak. Just let me handle this okay, Pet. I'll protect us. You want our family to be safe don't you? That freak isn't a part of our family. You know I am only doing this because I want what's best for us."

"O-okay, okay, just... do it quickly."

It was then, that Freak knew he probably wasn't going to survive. He was going to die and nobody would care because nobody cared about freaks. That was fine, he was resigned to his fate and death couldn't be any worse than life already was.

But then the door was pulled open and Uncle Vernon's heavy footsteps echoed ominously in the dark.

"Where are ya' you damned freak?"

Freak cursed his heavy breathing, his heart accelerating violently in his chest. He wasn't afraid of dying, so he couldn't understand the fear coursing through his chest.

Through clouded eyes, he could make out the dark outline of a silencer pointed straight at him.

"Found you."

Vernon Dursley.

Bitterly, Freak allowed a wave of rage fill him.

He knew what he was and he knew what he'd never become. He'd taken beating after beating, and compliantly remained silent no matter how vicious of a verbal lashing he received and never had he once complained about it. Never once had Freak not accepted his place at the feet of everybody else. He was an abomination, he was worth nothing, but this-?

A mad sort of laughter bubbled up from his chest.

If he was going to die, it would not be at the hands of Vernon fucking Dursley.

"What the fuck are you laughing about? Shut the hell up!"

 _I am not going to die_ , Freak chanted to himself, _not at the hands of Vernon Dursley._ Even if he was a freak, even if he'd already thrown out all of his hopes and dreams, he'd never let his end be because of that man.

Fueled by his rage, his magic gathered painfully in his chest and just as Vernon's finger curled over the trigger, he released it.

From her place above the basement, Petunia shrieked as a loud crack sounded from below her.

Freak laughed through the pain of being squeezed through a tight tube, because if he was going to die at least it wouldn't be at the hands of Vernon fucking Dursley.

* * *

 _CRACK._ "The hell?"

Freak screamed and slapped his hands over his eyes as the dim moonlight flooded his vision, still too blinding for his eyes to handle.

"Who the fuck are you?" A gruff voice demanded. A large hand yanked him off his feet by the collar of his oversized, blood-stained, shirt.

"Lights... is hurts-" Freak slurred, his head spinning.

"What?" The same voice growled, sounding more confused than angry now.

"Lights go'n blind me-" Freak whimpered as he fell limp in the arms of the wolf.

Sniffing the limp body of the freak, the wolf wondered what the half dead human (wizard) child was doing so far from home.

* * *

 _Once upon a time there was a boy called freak, who dragged himself out of his hole in the basement and into the clutches of a man eating wolf._

 _Face to face with the wolf, Freak stared with large unfocused eyes and said, "I don't think I'll taste very good."_

 _And to the freak, the wolf replied, "then I s'pose I ought to keep you around until you do."_

 _Covered from head to toe in dirt and his own dried blood, Freak said to the wolf, "then until that day arrives, please call me Red."_

* * *

 _Sweet and sound she sleeps in Granny's bed, between the paws of the tender wolf._


End file.
